by Ace Atkins
“She’s got work early in the morning,” Quinn said. “Same as you.”
“What is it with you and married women?” Lillie said. “You sure as shit got the fever for it. Is it the temptation or the danger that gets your blood boiling?”
Quinn searched around the desk for his box of cigars, reaching for an Undercrown, his go-to smoke, and snipping off the end. He kicked open his Zippo, banged up by other Rangers before him, from Vietnam to Somalia to Iraq. But damn if it still didn’t work fine. He sat back down and took a sip of some cold coffee, his temple still throbbing, now at a persistent but easy pace.
“Blue Daniels,” Quinn said. “Cho Cho Porter. And Caddy and Boom doing our jobs for us. What the hell’s happening, Lillie? I don’t care for what they’re doing. And I sure as hell don’t like my assistant sheriff keeping secrets.”
“I didn’t want to piss you off.”
“Since when?” Quinn said, blowing smoke up into the ceiling fan.
“I was looking out for you as much as I was Caddy,” Lillie said. “Boom is just being Boom. He was watching out for your baby sister because that’s what he does.”
“Did Blue Daniels do something to those two girls?”
“He’s part of it,” Lillie said. “But, signs and wonders, he’s changed the fucking story he told me. He doesn’t know those girls now. He doesn’t know Cho Cho Porter or even his own fucking name.”
“He say where they went?”
“He told Caddy he’d sold them.”
Quinn smoked down the cigar. He played with the cutter on his desk, watching the smoke lift up out of the ashtray and scatter in the blades. Outside, in the jail yard, he spotted a couple of prisoners washing Lillie’s Cherokee, hosing off all the soap bubbles under the bright lights.
“Blue was pimping them out. And when he got tired of that, he sold them to Fannie Hathcock.”
“Shit.”
“Hold up, hold up,” Lillie said. “Fannie and I had a little heart-to-heart the other night and she denies every word. She says she doesn’t know Blue or those girls. She said she doesn’t put underage girls on the pole or out on the lot. Of course she said no prostitution ever happens out at the Golden Cherry.”
“You believe her?”
“Fuck no.”
“Then what do we have?”
“Nothing,” Lillie said. “But I came to you because I’m sick and tired of Caddy’s bullshit. I’ve run interference for as long as I can, more for you than her. But she’s got someone inside Vienna’s Place whispering in her ear about what goes on out there.”
“Caddy feels a kinship with those pole dancers.”
“Don’t get negative, Sheriff,” Lillie said. “Doesn’t suit you. Besides, she’s trying to do the right thing. And she’s gotten a shitload farther down the road with this disappearance than you and me, two supposedly professional law enforcement officers. What bothers me isn’t just these girls but the other rumors Caddy passed on about Fannie.”
Quinn waited.
“According to Caddy, Fannie’s been running illegals through the truck stop since she got to town,” Fannie said. “Girls coming in from the Coast, Vietnamese and Mexicans. She’s been working some kind of fucked-up way station sending these girls to big cities. From there, nobody knows what happens, but I sure as hell can use my imagination.”
“Christ.”
“We’re gonna need him. And some help from the Feds,” Lillie said. “You still got that tattooed weirdo in Oxford on speed dial?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well,” Lillie said, “eat your barbecue and get ready. I have a feeling that this shit show is just getting revved up.”
• • •
“Oh, holy fuck,” Cord said, gritting his teeth. “Jesus.”
“Don’t be a pussy,” Wilcox said. “You’ve been shot before. And you’ll be shot again.”
Opie had pulled off at a Love’s truck stop somewhere thirty, forty miles south of Memphis. They’d pulled around back, behind the safety of all the tractor-trailer trucks, where they could get a better idea of the wound. It wasn’t pretty. Two big holes through Cord’s stomach, one nasty exit wound in his back. Wilcox had ripped open the QuikClot with his teeth, packed the front and rear wounds, and rewrapped Cord’s midsection with lots of gauze and more duct tape. “Motherfucker,” Cord said, breathing hard, wheezing, but awake and wild-eyed.
“Better?” Opie asked, laying Cord on his back, the Yukon’s seats pushed down flat, with the bags and boxes of money stacked behind the driver’s side.
“Sure,” Wilcox said. “That’ll slow it down. But he’s lost a fuckload of blood. Doesn’t matter. Cord is ninety percent tequila and cold beer.”
Opie covered up the bags and boxes with a blanket and went around the side to push his hoodie under Cord’s head. He slammed the door and walked in front of the Yukon to where Wilcox was smoking a cigarette. His hands covered in blood.
“You need to get cleaned up.”
“So do you,” Wilcox said. “Anyone asks, tell them we were cleaning fish.”
“Never seen a fish bleed like that.”
“This is the Delta,” Wilcox said. “They got goddamn catfish in the river bigger than this truck. Rednecks go out into the little coves and catch them with their bare hands. I shit you not.”
“Your people are crazy.”
“Not my people,” Wilcox said. “Like I said, this is the Delta. These people are born fucked-up.”
Opie shook his head, taking a cigarette from Wilcox. The kid’s hand shaking as he held it to his lips, Wilcox lighting the end. “He’s bad.”
“Yep.”
“And he’s going to die if we don’t get him a doctor.”
“Damn straight.”
“Those motherfuckers,” Opie said. “I wish they weren’t dead.”
Wilcox just stared at the crazy kid and blew smoke out of his nose. In the distance, the lights clicked on over the big diesel pumps. “Why?”
“So we could go back and kill their asses again.”
“We better stay out of Memphis for a while.”
Opie nodded, waiting for directions, orders, a fucking action plan that didn’t exist.
“His woman,” Wilcox said. “We call her. Tell her the situation and get her to have a doctor waiting on us out at that airfield.”
“You think she’ll do it?”
“Hell,” Wilcox said. “You’ve showered with Jonas Cord. He’s hung like a barnyard donkey.”
Opie nodded, seeing the logic in the explanation. Wilcox looked down at his hands, wanting to wash up, get clean and straight before moving on, but he knew there wasn’t much time. They needed a little gas, maybe just a half tank, to cut across the state to Tibbehah County.
“You know how to reach her?”
“Cord does,” Wilcox said.
“Is he going to die?”
“Hell, I don’t know, man,” Wilcox said. “Don’t ask stupid fucking questions like that. Cover up that blood and get cleaned up. I’ll fuel up the truck and talk to Cord.”
“Change the plates before you do.”
“Who the fuck are you talking to, kid?” Wilcox said. “I didn’t get you boys in and out of the Wasteland by sheer luck. Jesus.”
“How much money is in there?”
“Boats, titties, and champagne dreams until your goddamn dick falls off.”
Opie covered his hand with his hoodie, walking in the cold in his black T-shirt, looking like any other All-American fuckface with freckles and jug ears. Goddamn Archie Andrews of the Marines. At one time, a million years back, Wilcox wanted to call him Archie, but Cord started the whole Opie thing, always whistling the Andy Griffith theme when the boy walked up.
Wilcox got in behind the wheel and headed to the pumps, lights shining down, the sun, oran
ge and big, being swallowed by the endless flat land over the Delta. He’d been all across the world and deep in the armpits of the earth, but he’d never felt a chill like this. His heart beat fast, not from excitement or danger but from feeling absolutely alone. He had finished another cigarette and started a new one, when he glanced down and saw the blood spotting the tip of his boot with a steady drip, drip.
It was the first time he knew the gunshot was that bad. He didn’t have time for it. He’d worry about it later after they got Cord safe and sound back to the backwoods whorehouse.
• • •
“Get up,” Fannie said.
Wrong Way lay asleep on a pool table in the Born Losers’ club house, some skinny bitch under the blanket with him. He was on his back, eyes closed, with a cigarette still burning between his lips, a bottle of half-empty Jack Daniel’s in the corner pocket, along with the girl’s panties.
“Up,” she said. “Get up, Lyle. Jesus, wake up.”
Wrong Way opened one eye and looked up at Fannie. “Don’t call me Lyle.”
“Get your woman dressed and gone,” she said. “We need to talk.”
“I thought you were still pissed at me,” said Wrong Way, skinny, with a long black beard and long black hair. He looked like Hollywood’s idea of what a pirate might’ve been. Central casting for a fuckup. The man only had on a pair of black underwear and black riding boots. Tattoos all over his arms and chest, most of them saying the Born Losers MC were the baddest motherfuckers in the Mid-South.
“How’d you get that idea?” Fannie said, plucking the cigarette from his lips and tossing it on the floor.
“I don’t know,” he said, pushing up off the pool table, waking the girl and looking around for something. “Maybe ’cause you told me and the boys to get the fuck out of the Golden Cherry or you were going to burn the motherfucker down?”
“Oh, yeah,” Fannie said. “Boy, was I in a mood.”
“You see my Levi’s?” he said. “Me and this little lady had a bet and she kind of lost. What’s your name again, girlie?”
“Fuck you, Lyle,” the girl said. She was pale and skinny, bony, and buck-ass naked. She fingered her panties from the corner pocket and scooted her ass out of the room. She had some kind of fucking dream catcher tattoo on her upper back. Young girls will ink anything on their bodies these days. When she hits forty, that dream catcher will look like an old catcher’s mitt.
“I tried calling.”
“I ditched my phone,” he said. “Threw it in the fucking river. Been meaning to get a new one.”
“I need help.”
“Of course you do,” he said, finding his jeans and a black T-shirt and wandering over to the makeshift bar in the corner, which was nothing but concrete blocks and two-by-fours with a cardboard cutout of some Mexican model holding a six-pack of Corona. Wrong Way unscrewed a new bottle of Jack and poured a good half glass in a jelly jar. “Goddamn Breakfast of Champions.”
“You still know that doctor down in Eupora?” she asked. “The one who lost his license for drinking in surgery?”
“Sure,” he said. “Why? One of your girls need a quick abortion? Because he’s more of a bone doctor. Patched some of the boys when they lay down their bikes.”
“Gunshot wounds?”
“Sure, sure,” he said, throwing back the rest of the whiskey. “He does it all. Took a shit ton of buckshot out of my back one time. You can barely see it.”
“And he won’t go to the police?”
“The police?” he said. “Fuck no. He hates the police maybe more than we do. He only has about eighteen DUIs. What’s your issue, Miss Hathcock?”
“I need you to sober up fast and scoot on down to Eupora,” she said. “I need that doctor out at that airfield in less than an hour.”
“Fuck me,” he said, laughing, hacking a little a little cough. “I can barely see. We stayed up for three days straight and I got fucked up and stoned to Jesus and back. Last thing I remember was my sweetie back there sticking a pool cue up my ass for a little fun.”
“Does this help?” Fannie asked, reaching into her bag and tossing down a wad of cash. “Sorry I didn’t have time to go to the fucking Hallmark store.”
Lyle smiled, playing with the gold hoop in his left ear. He walked over to the rat’s nest of his pool table bed and picked up the cash. “Well,” he said. “Sure, then. OK.”
“And whatever bullshit problem that passed between me and the Losers is now done.”
“Didn’t figure it was forever,” Lyle said, and reached for Fannie’s ass and pinched it. “We got ourselves a mutual admiration society.”
“In your fucking dreams,” she said, knocking his hand away. “But don’t worry. I’ll get that skank back to wherever you found her.”
“Hell of a ride back to Tulsa,” he said, thinking on it. “Or was it OK City?”
“Hope she likes riding Greyhound,” she said. “Get your shit on and go.”
“How bad is your friend?” he said, face serious, as he pulled on his shirt and kicked off his boots to slide on the jeans.
“Haven’t seen him yet,” she said. “But it’s bad.”
“Man or a woman this time?”
“Man.”
“Is he important?” Lyle asked, buttoning up. “Or hired help?”
“Important.”
Lyle got dressed, reached for the key to his Harley, and whistled for a couple of the boys asleep in the back. They wandered out, slit-eyed and sniffing like coyotes from a burrow. Fannie stayed at the bar, pouring herself a shot and saying a little prayer. The skank looked at her and asked if she was OK.
“Even better if you’d just fuck off.”
21
“You won’t catch anything if you come inside,” Caddy said.
“Appreciate it,” Quinn said, looking to the mouth of The River’s barn, bright light and music spilling out. Tons of cars and trucks parked all along the road and down by the garden. “But I didn’t come for the fellowship.”
“Then why are you here?” Caddy said. “It’s third Sunday. We always do a night service on the third Sunday. Hell, even you know that.”
“Y’all sure do love some church.”
“Maybe you would, too, if you had the damn Blackwood Brothers performing.”
“I thought the Blackwood Brothers were dead?” Quinn asked.
“Since you asked, the last surviving member of the original Blackwood Brothers, James, went home to be with the Lord in 2002. But his son Billy continues the family tradition with Wayne Little, Butch Owens, and Mike Helwig. Some of the best old-time gospel around. When Momma found out Billy used to play drums for J. D. Sumner and The Stamps, she about lost her mind.”
“Of course she did,” Quinn said. “She once said Sumner had the voice of God Himself.”
“But you didn’t come for the service,” she said.
“Nope.”
“How about some supper?” she said. “We’re feeding about a hundred folks tonight after the show. Can’t you smell the chicken in the pit?”
The gospel music rattled the wood of the barn, a man taking the lead in a deep bass that brought a lot of clapping and hollering from inside. If Quinn didn’t know any better, he’d’ve thought J. D. Sumner had come back to life, Quinn never forgetting Sumner’s voice on his mother’s Elvis record, “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” that she played over and over. Caddy looked back at the barn and then at Quinn, growing impatient. The light over the river and down in the cotton fields, now bare, had turned a bright orange and deep black.
“I know what you and Boom have been up to,” Quinn said. “Why didn’t you just come to me straight off?”
“I did,” she said. “And where’d that get me?”
“I tried my best,” Quinn said. “But Tamika’s own mother said she’d just run away. I didn’t h
ear a word about them being damn snatched and sold off.”
Caddy swallowed, slipping her hands deep into her dusty jeans pockets. “Well,” she said. “I just learned that myself.”
“Been a good thing for the sheriff to know.”
“You and Lillie start kicking around and the bad guys might get spooked,” she said. “Boom knew some folks.”
“Goddamn Cho Cho Porter.”
“Yeah, he knew Cho Cho Porter. And she told us some things about the girls,” she said. “You think she would’ve talked to you?”
“Nope,” Quinn said. “But Blue Daniels would have. And I wouldn’t even have to have hit him with my truck.”
“Listen,” Caddy said, holding up the flat of her hand. “That was an accident.”
Quinn studied his sister, her cropped hay-colored hair, wrinkles forming at the edge of her eyes, looking older than she should. “He ran out in front of Boom’s truck?”
“No,” Caddy said. “He was trying to shoot Boom. He was waving around a gun and I was trying to get the gun away from him.”
“OK,” Quinn said. “That makes sense. But that’s how you got Lillie into this mess. If it had been anybody else but Lillie, I would’ve fired them. Y’all should have at least been charged with a hit-and-run.”
“Not really.” Caddy narrowed her eyes. “We didn’t run.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“What is it?” Caddy said. “What do you want me to do? You want me to tell you that I’m gonna quit looking for those girls? Because that ain’t gonna happen. They came to me looking for answers and help and I did all I could. Blue Daniels should have his damn pecker chopped off in the town square.”
Inside the Barn, the Blackwood Brothers did a slow rendition of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” “That’s some real Old Testament shit you got going on,” Quinn said.
“You want to lecture me after all the men you killed?”
Quinn nodded. “We all got a notch in our belts,” he said, regretting it as soon as it slipped from his mouth.
“I know who I am,” she said. “And what I’ve done.”
